Quill
Ten generations ago, Quill collided with Banyan in an event now called "the Fall." Quill was the smaller of the two continents, and barely survived. The shard itself was torn asunder, broken into thousands of pieces. Teryxians speak of their home shard, Quill in reference to the Fall - i.e. before or after the Fall. Now Quill is more of a floating archipelago than anything else. Vast islands, some with broken rivers streaming over their edges, or bits of jungle clinging to life upon a vertical wall of rock. Some pieces are as small as boulders, some as large as mountains — all of them drifting through the sky in fixed positions relative to one another, held in place by whatever force of the Overlight holds the shards aloft. Being able to master the skies, Teryxians can travel to and from the various islands at will. FLORA The dominant landform of Quill is tropical jungle, rich with wetlands and rivers, though there are also vast expanses of rock-filled marshy foothills and cloud-shrouded peaks atop towering mountain ranges. Quill receives more direct light from above than any of the other shards except Nova. It is a dense and steamy tangle, filled with abundant life and running water. The flora of the jungle is thick and riotously prolific, with huge, glorious flowers bursting from vines thicker than a Haarkeen man’s thigh, while trees and ferns boast leaves large enough to use as sails on small river vessels. Many of these plants are carnivorous and have deduced seductive traps for unknowing passersby. FAUNA Reptiles, birds, insects, and small primates of every variety and color can be found in its depths. Giant, carnivorous tree salamanders glide from canopy to branch upon webbed toes, feet splayed out to ride the wind. As they silently stalk down a tree trunk or drop from above, their prey never sees or hears them coming. Eyeless blind monkeys roam the middle layers, somehow detecting their surroundings through a trick of the Overlight. They forage for fruit in small family groups, and, when they detect danger, join forces with their neighbors to go on exploratory missions or even slave raids against competing troupes. There are butterflies three feet across that shine with metallic colors and leave glimmering trails and the scent of vanilla in the air behind them. Their cocoons, when touched with bare skin, produce hallucinations both sacred and maddening. And, lest they be forgotten, the Ocehualli: the Shadow Jaguars. These are the same creatures known on other shards as the Grymalkyn, and they have always been our enemy. Long a plague upon the Teryxians, the Grymalkyn are large, jet- black jaguars which have the unnerving ability to bend space as they literally step into the shadows and disappear. It has long been hypothesized that, by stepping into the shadow, the jaguars are actually somehow stepping through the shadow to re-emerge from some other dark place far removed. This defies everything that we know about the Chroma (and indeed, physics), so these ideas are largely dismissed as speculative fancy, designed to frighten fledglings. That said, nothing is more satisfying to the palate of a Grymalkyn than a clutch of newly hatched Teryxian young. Before the Fall, the skylines of Quill were dominated by these towering mud-and-stone spires which peeked out from beneath the jungle canopy, and the majority of the Teryxian populace lived and worked within them. The spires were crafted with the help of a variety of carefully bred beasts of burden, including Jeweled Dragonflies and the Pitzoquitl, the animals also known as Mud-Hogs. The selective breeding programs which produced these beasts, and others like them, were abandoned after the Fall. Strange and dangerous creatures can now be found running feral in the mists, having long ago learned to survive and thrive on their own. CLIMATE Cloud drift from Zenith can create massive weather events, and any length of time on Quill without a short but heavy rainfall is a rarity. KEY LOCATIONS The largest island of Quill is called the Azure Sea — so named because it is fully covered by the largest stretch of jungle in the entire known world, much of its foliage tinged with the sapphire-blue hues so common to life upon this shard. The jungle on this island is cleanly split in two, courtesy of the astonishing natural feature known as the Barrier Waterfalls, which is fed by the island that floats high above the far side of the Azure Sea, the Cerulean Basin whose surface area is given over to an ancient caldera filled with what was once a large inland sea. One of the walls of the caldera was broken during the Fall, and now an unimaginably huge waterfall streams out of the sky in a vast curtain, blocking out the sky and horizon, cleaving the land of the Azure Sea into two separate environments. The immense, unending flow of water has carved a steep river valley into the land, where the water rushes with tremendous force before plummeting off the shard’s edge. On one side of the Barrier Waterfalls is a bright and sunny jungle, with steam rising off the canopy. On the other side (if you can find one of the few safe places to cross beneath the deluge) is a darker and more foreboding environment, forever under the shadow of the island above it. Some of the most wondrous treasures of old Quill probably lie hidden in its depths — along with some of its most horrifying mistakes. There is another island, a veritable mountain in the clouds, which we call Mount Quiya. If you look off the edge of a certain part of the Azure Sea, Mount Quiya positively dominates the sky. The towering structure of mud and stone that rises from its slopes is called the Last Spire, and the mere sight of the silhouette of this last remnant of the Quill-that-was is enough to lighten the heart of any Teryxian who sees it. While the remains of many towers and spires can be seen peeking above the canopy of Quill’s jungles, remnants of the time before the Fall, the ones near Mount Quiya are some of the few that are not in ruins and still actively used by the Teryxians. There is one area of Quill where, for reasons unknown, the rocks and small islands do not remain in static, fixed positions relative to one another, instead floating about in chaotic patterns, often grinding or crashing together. The scholars at the Timekeeper’s Lodge have made long study of this area, called the Crumble (or the Bloodstones), but have not yet been able to decipher the physics at work. They fear that the delicate balance may somehow be upset by any activity other than the precise, dedicated study of the ostrakonomers. The Rangers too have officially recommended that the populace of Quill stay clear of the area. This has done nothing to keep thrill-seeking youths from using the area for hazing rituals and honor duels.